The SEC claims its proposal is as strong as the DOL conflict-of-interest rule issued during the Obama administration, and was set to go into effect last year. But companies that had responded to the DOL rule by transitioning to more transparent, lower-fee products — which even they described as “intended to address … conflicts” — are quietly rolling back those changes now that the DOL rule has been tossed out and they have seen the weaker SEC proposal. Wall Street might be excited about a green light to cheat working families, but it’s a bad sign for consumers.
With wages flatlining for many families and the cost of health care, housing, education and child care skyrocketing, it’s hard enough to save money. The last thing the average American saver needs is to lose money because of conflicted advice from their brokers. If the SEC doesn’t make these four concrete improvements to its proposal, it will have failed to fix this huge problem — and with it, failed to substantially “increase[e] investor protections and the quality of advice,” as Chairman Clayton once promised he would do.
This article was provided by Bloomberg View.